Friday, August 11, 2017

Putin System Now Facing One of Four ‘Inglorious Ends,’ Piontkovsky Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 10 – The Kremlin “simply
doesn’t know” how to react to the personal sanctions the new US law imposes,
not only because they put an end to a key feature of the Putin system but also
because the attacks the measure calls for against the most corrupt leaders in
Russia echo or even have the support of the Russian people, Andrey Piontkovsky
says.

As a result, it is increasingly obvious
that “the noose is tightening around the neck” of the Putin system and that it
faces one of four “inglorious ends,” the Russian analyst says. These include “an
attempt at hybrid capitulation with Putin at the head,” “an attempt at hybrid
escalation with Putin at the head,” an attempt of hybrid capitulation without
Putin,” and “capitulation” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=598AEFD434D75).

The Putin regime’s dilemma, one of
its own making because of its overreaching aggression and efforts to influence the
outcome of the US elections, has arisen, Piontkovsky says, because it “is not
in a position to respond to the law on sanctions in any serious way.”It thus will have to wait as members of the
Putin elite are exposed for the criminals they are.

The Kremlin has no model of behavior
to fall back on, he continues, because “there was nothing like this in the
years of the cold war” and because the personal provisions of the new sanctions
legislation fall not only on Russia as a whole but more critically on
individual members of the Putin elite.

While the Kremlin will do all it can
to distract the attention of Russians from this reality, Piontkovsky says that
he is “absolutely certain that this hunt for the wolves will enjoy the sympathy
and gratitude of the multi-national Russian people” who have suffered as well
by the actions of this elite.

In the immediate term, he argues,
this may lead to a further deterioration of relations between Moscow and the
West; but over time, it points to the ultimate defeat of Putinism and Putin’s
Russia in “the fourth world war” which the Kremlin leader was incautious enough
to launch because he failed to understand the world in which he was operating.

There now isn’t going to be “any
Yalta-2” about which so much ink was spilled earlier. Instead, Russian elites,
fearful of their own survival now that they are being cut off from the wealth
they’ve stashed in the West, will choose between two variants or in fact four:
hybrid capitulation or hybrid escalation, and in each case with Putin or
without him.